Numpty Dumpty

What’s the latest celebrity fashion in Hollywood? That’s right – squid. Squid are the must-have accessory for 2006, and anybody who’s anybody (or has even stood next to somebody who’s been close to anybody) has got their own pet squid.

You can buy squid clothes and accessories, too. Elizabeth Taylor spends more than $50,000 a month on her pet squid Marmaduke. He has his own little squid palace, complete with luxury squid furnishings and a special squid ballroom with chandeliers and a glitter ball. On Saturdays, she takes him to the ball game, where he has his own private box. And on Sunday morning they both go to a special squid church where Marmaduke meets all his little squid friends.

Personally, I think he looks a bit silly in his tartan coat and deerstalker hat, and as far as I can tell a squid has no use for a pipe whatsoever. But Ms. Taylor seems to think he looks good in them, and as long as she’s happy then I suppose its okay.

I draw the line at putting him in Wellington boots, though – and dragging his tentacles along the ground to make out like he’s walking: well, that’s just low, in my opinion.

Jelly Fish. Marzipan Crab.

My local supermarket is having a sale on random numbers. You can get them in packs of 6 for just £1.99, which is a positive steal compared to what so-called “specialist” Random Number stores are charging. Granted, you won’t get the in-depth product knowledge when you buy in bulk at a supermarket. But the savings are simply too great to ignore.

And at the rate I get through random numbers, the cheaper the better! In our house we seem to live on nothing else. Take this morning, for example. I had to make an obscene phone call to a complete stranger living abroad. That’s five random numbers gone before I’ve even had breakfast!

Then for my daughter’s school science project she had to assign random numbers to a colony of frogs. The frog with the highest number won a prize. (I think it was a hairbrush.)

And my wife gets through them they’re going out of fashion. Which they’re not. Mind you, I recently found a whole stack of random numbers hidden under the seat of her car. I think she likes to carry a bunch around with her, just in case. She mainly uses them to confuse sales people who call her up at work. They’ll ask something like; “Madam, are you happy with your existing* vacuum cleaner?” to which she’ll reply; “24 6 78 253 13”. It usually does the trick.

I plan to grab a year’s supply of random numbers while the sale lasts. The only question now is where to store them. Perhaps in the loft with that supply of right angles that I won in a raffle?

* Happier than she would be with a non-existent vacuum cleaner, I would wager.

Bird Flu. Fish Swam. Cat Poo.

If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s having red hot needles inserted under my fingernails. It’s never actually happened. I was just taking an educated guess. And that’s what separates us from the beasts: that and the electrified fence I’ve had installed around the perimeter of the camp. You can’t be too careful these days. Okay, actually you can be too careful. Take my Uncle Charlie, for example. He used to insist on eating boiled eggs wearing a space suit. Come to think of it, it was Auntie Jill who insisted on the space suit. She’d make him wear it in bed after he’d had a curry, too.

Adolf Hitler. Now he was an odd sort of chap, wasn’t he? Some people collect stamps. Other people make model railways. Adolf Hitler used to stuff his ears full of live moths and recite poetry to them. It didn’t catch on, of course. The moths would get stuck in his copious earwax and Herman Goering and Albert Speer would waste hours digging them out with tiny little silver jewel-encrusted trowels - a gift from Queen Latifa to commemorate the anniversary of Britain’s entry to the common market.

Queen Latifa is renowned for her generosity. In 1833 she donated the left hemisphere of her mind to Unicef, which they used to finance a series of ill-advised sitcom pilots written by Sir Ben Elton. Barely a century later she gave the King of Luxemburg a dozen hippopotamuseses, which he later sold at auction to pay off debts incurred when he ill-advisably wagered his entire fortune on a race between a hare and a tortoise. (To be fair, nobody saw that one coming.)